


a little human(oid) interest

by screamlet



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:33:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8972212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: Surprising everyone, including Spock himself, the senior crew of the Enterprise was invited to a black-tie gala a week after the ship’s return Earth, hosted by none other than Dr. Amanda Grayson.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/gifts).



> Set at the end of the five-year mission, in an AU where Amanda and Sybok survived the destruction of Vulcan.

Surprising everyone, including Spock himself, the senior crew of the _Enterprise_ was invited to a black-tie gala a week after the ship’s return Earth, hosted by none other than Dr. Amanda Grayson. 

Spock and Jim were staying at his mother’s new residence, acquired once Dr. Grayson had _firmly_ turned down the offer of assuming her husband’s post as the ambassador to the Vulcan colony and the Federation finally chose to believe her. They were due to leave for the museum his mother had engaged to sponsor the occasion, but not before she and Jim had the chance to comment on every aspect of Spock’s appearance. 

“Is there a reason traditional Vulcan lapels are so tall and pointy?” Jim asked.

“You’re supposed to fold them down once you’re indoors, unless you’re a pompous jerk who wants to look like a lizard with a neck frill. To each their own.” Amanda demonstrated on Spock. “Really, on any planet that isn’t Vulcan, they’re kept folded down but: sandstorms.”

“Shit, right,” Jim said. Jim looked at Spock and touched the edge of his newly trimmed pointy sideburns, smiling a little. “Not much of a chance of that in San Francisco, _I guess_.”

Spock made a face at Jim’s touch, but he focused on his mother and her hands on his collar. “I can fold down my own lapels,” Spock said, taking his mother’s hands and removing them from his neck. 

“Why are you so _annoyed_?” she sighed. “Let me fuss over you for the first time in five years. It’s been _five years_ , almost six if you count all your delays. Sybok won’t even do me the favor of wearing something that _can_ be fussed over.”

“Does his outfit for tonight include pants, at least?” Jim asked. 

“More like a gown,” Amanda said.

“Right on,” Jim nodded. “Hey, look at me, do I look handsome, too? Is my suit okay? I wasn’t sure about this color. Bones is my usual go-to wardrobe guy and he rolled his eyes and said _ugh whatever_ which is usually good, but that doesn’t say much about how this jacket fits? It feels a little tight?”

“Sweetheart, that’s just what a tailored suit jacket feels like. Did you know about the fit of uniform shirts and the length of time you’re in space? There was this fascinating article about how something in the artificial air of starships has the materials stretching out at a much faster rate than they do on the planet-side conditions where they’re manufactured and tested.”

“If you find that, can you send it to me and Uhura?” Jim asked. “It was probably space and cabin fever slowly driving us nuts, but she kinda lost her shit about eighteen months in when all her dresses and shirts were starting to get baggier so we thought maybe _she_ was losing body mass? And Bones spent like a week running all these tests—”

Spock silently stepped out of the room and went down the hall to knock at the entrance of Sybok’s room. Sybok, who had returned to the quadrant after the destruction of Vulcan and found he didn’t loathe society as much as he had when he was a teenager, was in the center of his room, reading and pacing.

“Jim and Mom get along like a house on _fire_ ,” Sybok noted without looking up.

“Yes,” Spock said. “He very much prefers our mother to his own.”

“Are you surprised? You’ve _met_ his mother.”

“She… is very competent.” 

Sybok raised his eyebrows and Spock let himself into the room.

“Why a gala?” Spock asked. 

Sybok’s face brightened at that and he tucked his reader into one of the voluminous pockets/folds of his outfit. “It’s actually _hilarious_. On one level, welcoming back literally the most famous living Vulcan who also happens to be her son, sure, but something super funny happened while you were away.”

“What would that be?”

“Apparently, your ship is weird,” Sybok said with an air of mystery. “And people who don’t care too much about exploration and stuff outside of how cheap it makes their fuel and groceries—they cared about you guys. Like, _a lot_. The logs your crew submitted to Starfleet were put out as PR videos, all, _here’s what we’re doing in space!_ And then it kind of became the most popular show in the Federation while you were gone?” Sybok crossed his arms and tapped his chin. “I probably should have mentioned this in my letters, but I thought you were involved, obviously.”  

“...our ship is weird?”

“Yeah, I’m… hm. Deep space, not much unofficial communication out there, right?” Sybok seemed to wait for Spock to nod, and nod with wide-open _yes you IDIOT_ eyes, before he continued. “So, the official story is something like, this is the first Starfleet deep space mission that wasn’t recalled home before the end of its five years, and it’s the first Starfleet deep space mission whose crew wasn’t roughly 40% Vulcan.”

At that, Spock froze.

“You knew that, right?”

“I think I did, but I fail to see the relevance.” 

Sybok opened his arms and shrugged. “Without us on board, shit gets weird. Weird enough that people planet-side were following your crew and all your hijinks—you guys are _insanely_ popular, Spock, because you’re all so weird.”

“You keep saying _weird_ but it wasn’t—” Spock focused on a spot on the floor as he tried to speed-catalogue his past five years and discover aberrations in behavior that would have made such a splash with the Federation but also didn’t have them immediately court martialed. “I don’t understand. We were fine. We—” 

Spock hesitated for a moment, then said something that he—something he found himself saying quite often in the past three years, and something he never thought he _would_ say when he was young and lived on Vulcan and intended to live his entire life on Vulcan. Having Sybok near him again reminded him of their childhood, of all the things they had wanted when they were young, all the things that had happened, and all the things they had done.

“We were happy,” Spock said. “Terrified, worried, under threat of death by boredom or violence every day we were on the ship but despite all that—Sybok, we were happy.” 

“Yeah,” Sybok huffed. “Apparently, _that’s_ the weird part.”

Jim appeared at the door with Amanda on his arm. “Hey, losers. Ready to party?” Jim tilted his head when he saw Spock. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Spock said. He straightened his shoulders and smoothed down his robes, then held out a hand. “Jim, would you walk with me?”

Jim grinned and beamed at Amanda. “I think my husband wants me to go steady with him. Do you think I’m ready? What if he gets fresh with me in front of all these diplomats?”

“Now I _know_ you didn’t get that from your mother,” Amanda laughed. “There’s a car waiting outside. Sybok, are you ready?”

“Yes, _Mom_ ,” Sybok sighed. “This is one of those museums where I can get unspeakably trashed, right?”

“I’m sure they won’t mind.”

*

Sybok, as usual, had wildly understated the entire situation. 

The four of them took a car to the new Museum of Astrobiological History, funded and built and opened while they were on their deep space mission. The crowds outside the building stretched out for blocks leading up to the museum. Jim and Spock leaned forward, staring out the dark windows at the people, their signs, their homemade Enterprises on sticks.

“Are we in a boy band?” Jim asked.

“Little bit,” Sybok said.

“I _really_ don’t get this,” Jim said as he pressed closer to the window. “Did I miss something? Did we save a bunch of planets people actually care about again?” 

“You introduced Andorians to a moose,” Sybok said.

Jim turned to Spock and grinned. “Aw, remember that? Poor Etothaa’s never gonna want to go camping again.” 

“How did you even _find_ a moose-like animal on a planet that wasn’t Earth?” Amanda asked. “Very few planets have had our sort environment that was conducive to megafauna—”

“And you just happened to find a planet that was still in its pre-humanoid megafauna evolution, and your away team just happened to find a moose, and then name the moose and spend three days on a planet hanging out with the moose, which your biologist named _Bob Alces_ because it looked like the much bigger cousin of a moose named Bob that used to trample their trash cans where they grew up and Alces for the species name,” Sybok said. He looked to Spock and made a face. “See? Weird.”

“It wasn’t _weird_ , it was something that happened,” Spock protested. 

“Nothing wrong with weird,” Sybok said. “Anyway, in case Mom or Starfleet didn’t tell you, all the planet-side diplomats can’t _wait_ to crawl up your ass with questions about the little stuff that happened on your ship. I think they forgot it wasn’t a show, but that they were watching actual people exploring actual places and things?”

Spock looked to Jim for help in reacting to this; it was some comfort that Jim was biting his lip and looking at Sybok thoughtfully.

“Yeah, I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Jim said. 

Sybok glanced to Amanda, both of them looking a little distressed. “Shouldn’t Starfleet have prepared them a little more for this? I thought they _knew_.”

“Right, we didn’t know that they—they basically turned you into a space opera,” Amanda said. “We thought you knew.”

“Nope!” Jim said. “We absolutely didn’t but hey, nothing we can do because Starfleet owns our literal asses until we die, so. Let’s get out there!”

They arrived at the red carpet leading to the door of the museum. This time, Jim took Spock’s hand and squeezed it tight before the door opened and they stepped out together.

*

McCoy was the first to find them once inside, a glass of bourbon already in his hand. 

“Jim, what the _fuck_ ,” he hissed at them when they arrived. “Did you—”

“Nope!” Jim said. “Hey, where’s the bar, because—”

“Do you know how many questions I’ve had to answer about teeth?” McCoy asked. It had been eight days since they had left the _Enterprise_ together, but McCoy only nodded to Spock in acknowledgment before he began laying into Jim about his evening so far. “The erotic properties of _teeth_ , Jim. This is above my pay grade. I don’t want to be on this pay grade anymore.” 

“We’ve gotta find Uhura,” Jim said. “How could they have turned us into a reality show without Comms knowing about it?” 

Spock interrupted: “The erotic properties of teeth?” 

McCoy nodded at Spock, his expression already wild around the eyes. “Yeah. Did you know humanoids with teeth only account for 15% of the Federation’s population? Apparently I was stupid enough to forget that stat in the six years since my last Astrobiology course, but hey, here we are, at the Museum of Astrobiological History, so let’s get the fuck to it. Teeth are _hot_ , just ask McCoy!” He sighed. “Excuse me. Stay here. Don’t leave me.”

Jim and Spock didn’t have a choice because Sulu rolled up right behind McCoy. 

“Uh, first, hi, Ben’s here, too, but he’s getting me a drink and it better be big and it better be on fire, like my brain,” Sulu said. “Second, I’ve been offered sixteen sponsorship and modeling deals since we landed last week.”

“What?” Jim asked. 

“Yeah, apparently I’m the face of _science is sexy_ and also _plants are sexy_ and—seriously, Jim, what the _fuck_ is going on?” 

“People got really invested in the boring logs we sent back to Starfleet,” Jim said. 

“We are weird,” Spock said.

“ _Are we_?” Sulu asked. 

Ben and McCoy returned with drinks just as Uhura and Scotty arrived, Uhura with a punch to Jim’s shoulder.

“Ow, what—”

“That wasn’t for you, that was for _me_ because I’m an _idiot_ ,” Uhura said. “The Comms lieutenants in charge of taking all of our mission logs and returning them to Starfleet thought it would be fun if they included little _human interest_ supplements with every report, and _those_ are the ones disseminated across Federation networks. Across the whole fucking _galaxy_ , we’re a space opera.”  

“What the shit,” Jim said. “We were working out there!”

“We explored new worlds, discovered new lifeforms and new civilizations,” Spock added.

Uhura whirled on Spock. “Did you just recite our fucking _tagline_ back at me?”

Spock said nothing, but took a small sidestep so Jim’s shoulder was in front of him and between him and Uhura. 

“They did this on their own time, but I’m so—I’m so _pissed_ ,” Uhura said. 

“Send me their names, I’ll have a sit down with them before they get too far from here,” Jim said.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve left the service,” Uhura said. “They’ve accepted lucrative private fucking contracts, whatever that’s worth in a post-cash society, doing more _day in the life_ reality-style programming for the Federation. Honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised if our team for the next mission included a few people dedicated specifically to generating _bullshit_ like this.”

“I thought it was fun!” Scotty said.

Everyone glared at him.

“I did!” Scotty protested. “No one ever cares about engineering, the tedious nonsense of how things work, but I watched some of the logs with the crew from my department and they made it all sound very interesting!”

“No shit,” Sulu said. 

“They did! Maybe now engineering won’t have sneak crumbs from the security budget and I won’t have to keep our aluminum flying coffin together with duct tape and dreams,” Scotty said. “Maybe I can get additional staff the next time around, leave me a bit of time for experimenting with new gadgets _before_ we’re in the midst of a crisis and blowing ourselves to bits.”

“Ugh, don’t do this,” McCoy said, brandishing his new glass of bourbon. “Don’t put an optimistic spin of things when you got an episode of _How It’s Made_ , but me and Chapel and M’Benga are now the galaxy’s hottest love triangle.” 

Uhura raised her eyebrows. “I’m listening.”

“They’re both happily engaged to other people,” McCoy said firmly. “Chapel calls me every day just to laugh and recap another five episodes of my mournful pining. Can’t _wait_ until she and her fiancée get to the time we beamed down and I got a spike through my foot and needed her tender, gentle care so I didn’t goddamn die, while M’Benga watched, consumed with worry, from across the room. It _looks_ like he was doing his job of treating patients but, really, he was pining.”

Jim turned to Spock and forced a smile at him. “Think it’s time to mingle and and try not to combust into balls of rage, before your brother tells everyone—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Sulu interrupted. “You and Spock and me and Ben got a whole episode about how we kept love alive and inspired the crew. It’s _one episode_ where I went around taking pictures to send to Ben and Demora, and the two of you have lunch together.”

“We… always have lunch together,” Spock said. 

“Exactly,” Sulu said. “You think that kind of devotion happens every day?”

“...Yes?” Spock said. “We often had lunch with all of you, together, because we were always on Alpha shift and our breaks overlapped.”

“And because you believed in the communal healing power of love,” Sulu said.

McCoy choked on his drink and burst out laughing. 

“That’s—oh my god,” McCoy laughed. “Oh my god, that’s the politest way of describing Jim’s Academy years I’ve ever heard. Oh, shit. I need to call Gary. How the fuck haven’t I—”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Jim yelled. “Excuse us!” 

*

Once Jim and Spock left their corner spot with the rest of the senior crew, they were immediately approached by familiar faces, Federation diplomats and Starfleet admirals who were beyond thrilled for the opportunity to discuss the inspirational moments of crew morale that they had the opportunity to experience over the past few years. 

“The moose episode in particular,” sighed Threllao, a representative from an Andorian colony. “What a way to encapsulate not just the Starfleet mission of exploration, but the Federation’s purpose of bringing species together, learning about each other—”

“It was a moose,” Spock said.

Representative Threllao gasped and clutched at their partner. “It wasn’t just the _moose_ , Commander. What about the other one—the mission where that brave Lieutenant Kim—”

“The surgery,” Spock said. He was aware that when he exhaled, it almost sounded like a sigh. 

“How,” said Threllao. “How did they survive performing such a complex operation on themselves?”

“Dr. McCoy, our ship’s physician, was dictating instructions to them over our communication system,” Spock explained.

“Yes, I know, we saw that while the doctor was unable to beam down to the planet and the away team was trapped on the surface with only their team,” said Threllao. “But I refer not to the logistics, but their _fortitude_ , Commander.”

It was Jim’s turn to tilt his head a little. “I don’t follow.”

“Captain,” Threllao said. “There was this lieutenant, an ordinary member of your crew, with organic projectiles embedding themselves into their body. The member of their medical team was already rendered unconscious due to the toxins of the projectiles, and Lieutenant Kim operated on their own body, _removed_ the projectiles from their own body with only spoken instructions and their own hands and rudimentary instruments to guide them.”

Jim lifted a hand and placed it firmly at the small of Spock’s back. Spock glanced over and could see that something was about to happen, that Jim was gearing up and he needed a grounding force before it did. If all Spock had to do was stand there, be there—it was the simplest thing Jim asked of him, now and every day. 

“Yeah, that’s what Lieutenant Kim did. That’s what most of us have to do at some point in our Starfleet careers on this mission,” Jim said. “Was it harrowing? Yes. Traumatic? Yes. It was terrible that those plant spores went for the medical ensign before anyone else, and they all had to work together to save the ensign and Lieutenant Kim had to work on their own body. That’s what we do. That’s what we do every day. Exploration isn’t easy, or everyone would do it. Everyone on our crew knows what they’re getting into when they enlist. Everyone knows that intelligence and training and bravery can only go so far. I don’t know what the rest is. I guess it’s—it’s knowing anyone will lay down their life to save yours, and you better be ready to do the same for them. And luck. You have to remember: of all the galaxies in the universe, and of all those stars, and of all those civilizations and planets, we’re the few who could take to exploring, who _could take_ exploring. We’re so lucky to do what we do, and we’re so lucky to survive it.” 

Jim, unfortunately, was prone to talking. Jim, unfortunately, had very good lungs and a great capacity for projecting his voice far without much effort. Jim, unfortunately, had fallen directly into his metaphorical captain’s chair, the one where getting through harrowing moments (such as the one Threllao had described) required summoning emotional strength and fortitude with only what he had at hand; in their work, that was often nothing, absolutely nothing except his wit and his words and his preternatural ability to hang on when everything else had left him. 

Jim had gravitational pull and that was why these things kept happening to them.

“Oh, _Captain_ ,” Threllao gasped, hands over their hearts. 

Jim inhaled sharply and turned to Spock. “I did it again, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Spock said. “Yes, you did.”

“Fuck,” Jim said. 

Spock heard Uhura before he saw her, and saw the punch coming to Jim’s arm before Jim did. 

“Ow, _what_!”

Uhura held out her device. “Your little speech was just live on the Federation network,” she said. “I leave you alone for ten _minutes_.”

Jim turned to Spock again and laced his fingers with Spock’s. “Didn’t your mom say there’d be food at this thing?”

“If you will excuse us,” Spock said to the now-tearful and emotional crowd that had gathered around them, silently taking photos of them the entire time. “We must forage for dinner in this brave new museum.”

Spock stopped, suddenly, because of a distinctly Vulcan noise, a _tsk_ of disapproval he hadn’t heard in many years. He turned and saw a young Vulcan man, one he didn’t recognize, standing just off to the side of where he and Jim had been standing. 

“What would the deceased Ambassador, your father, say?” he asked Spock in Vulcan. “Your levity disgraces him.”

“Perhaps,” Spock replied in Vulcan. “But I have survived and he did not, and if levity is what I required to survive, I will not question it. Nor do you have the right to question me on my father. Excuse me.”

Spock led both Jim and Uhura away from the crowd, spotting his mother across the room in her own large question-and-answer session full of strangers. 

“Jim, do you speak Vulcan yet?” Uhura asked. “Because your husband was just really fucking hot.” 

“Of course I speak Vulcan,” Jim said before he leaned in closer to Spock. “Don’t worry, the tone in that smackdown of ages didn’t need translating. Come on, we need to find dinner before my liver or my soul find a way to quit my body.”

*

Shortly after dinner, Jim took Spock’s hand and led him away from the crowds, down the museum’s marble corridors that were wholly unfamiliar to both of them; however, if they were good at anything, it was finding an escape route. 

Jim pushed open an old-fashioned fire exit and led Spock outside, greeting the open air with a quiet, “Thank _fuck_.” 

“That was… an evening.” Before Jim could lead him away, Spock held the door’s handle so it would close behind them quietly, rather than slamming shut and echoing through the halls. 

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to go back to Starfleet and find the admiral in charge of PR because if they want us to become the Federation’s hottest nature special, we need some kind of control over that,” Jim said. “Or, you know, maybe they don’t do that to us next time?”

“No, they will,” Spock said. “It generates interest and engagement, and they will not let us go until they face backlash in some completely inevitable way. It will probably cost us our lives first.”

“Great, can’t wait,” Jim said. “I give it three years. Those kinds of mass destruction fate-of-the-galaxy events tend to happen on three-year cycles, for whatever reason, so let’s keep an eye out, huh?” 

Jim had led them out of the museum to a private garden they would probably see a hundred more times at a hundred more galas in the years to come, but the museum was new and they might have been the first to amble over to a bench in a secluded spot, the glow of the city beyond all the fancy new shrubbery, the sound of the bay beyond the traffic.

“You give any more thought to our year off?” Jim asked. “I didn’t know Sybok would be back. I mean, I knew that Sybok was back, but that he _stayed_ back. You think you’ll stay with him and your mom? Or should we look for a place of our own?” 

Spock glanced at Jim, their hands linked and resting comfortably on the bench between them. Jim was looking at nothing in particular, eyes half-lidded as he seemed to listen to their surroundings. 

“That depends,” Spock said. “Do you want to live with me, or with me and my entire family?”

“It gets quiet, just you and me,” Jim said. “Which is nice, don’t get me wrong, but I think going from a crew of 1500, a ship constantly awake around us—I wouldn’t mind living with a family for a while. And it’s not like our core groupies will stay gone for a whole year. Bones keeps saying he wants to go back to Georgia, but I give him six days, tops, before he’s back here telling the story of how he enlisted to escape the humidity. And Demora is what, eight now? She’s crazy in love with your dark mysterious brooding, so obviously we’ve gotta stick around and babysit sometimes.” 

Spock leaned in and pressed a kiss to Jim’s hair, here while they were alone and he had the chance.

“I didn’t need to be persuaded,” Spock said.

“Yeah, I know,” Jim said. “I liked doing it anyway.” 

“I know you did.”

They sat outside for another few moments, until Jim spoke again.

“Hey,” Jim said. “That second tree to your right, about ten feet from you, has a _giant_ motherfucking snake wrapped around the branches and it’s slowly coming down the trunk. Let’s… slowly leave the bench and walk back to the museum, huh?”

“I have no weapons on me,” Spock said.

“Seriously? Nothing?”

“Some personal electronics that would take too long to rig into a short-range lightning device, Jim.”

“...how do you define _too long_?”

“The snake is almost to the grass, so I will only say: _too long_.”

“Mmm, okay, let’s walk slowly and take the long way to the door, away from the snake and closer to the walls, huh? Good idea? Fuck, why does this shit always _happen_ to us? I just wanted five minutes alone with you, _fuck_.”

“Walk slower, Jim, you always speed up when you’re angry.”

“There’s a _snake_ in the literal _grass_ behind us, Spock!”

Once they were about twenty feet from the snake, they gave up the pretense of calm and sprinted to the museum door, Jim pulling the door open with Spock slamming it shut behind the two of them. Jim leaned against the wall of the stairwell with his eyes closed and laughed, then held out his hands for Spock. “Fuck. _Fuck_. Why is it always us?” 

Spock didn’t have an answer for that, so he kissed Jim again and led him back to the party, where they could tell someone about the potentially lethal animal loose in the garden and quietly make another escape into the night. 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/screamlet) \+ [reblog](http://screamlet.tumblr.com/post/154905219371/)


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